The Trees Are Dreaming

In the realm of sleep, all things are as they dream. Even the smallest stone has dreamt eons into an immense and incomprehensible palace, while the fish have only half slept, leaving faint trails of malformed light. The trees have spent their years between slumber and half awake, and the eldest have formed great realms.

Fairy tree by Lisa Parfenova

1. Sea of dirt, so full and rich that a human could live on it, so long as they can stomach the taste.
2. Roots shoot across the ground, spearing through the dream's trespassers as easily as soil.
3. Malformed lumberjack with axes for fingers and saw blades for teeth, mindlessly hacking at the trunk and biting off branches.
4. The tree is immeasurably tall, reaching branches and leaves up to grasp around the sun. The light is dim and green.
5. It is gently raining without end.
6. Razor winds tear at leaves and branches, not a leaf can sprout without being ripped away.
7. Dusty, choking sand spreads as far as the eye can see, the tree is withered and struggling.
8. The air is choked with flying termites and aphids, swirling around the bitten, scarred trunk.
9. Lightning stings and rips away at the tree frantically, storming relentlessly.
10. Little misshapen dream-people rip off chunks of wood, crafting them into strange geometries which then begin to grow, setting roots and sprouting leaves, consuming the thieves that built them.
11. Branches reach out as far from the trunk as possible, but instead of leaves they sprout only flame.
12. The sun slides across the sky in unnatural directions, the tree twisting and warping itself as it tries to catch the light.
13. The ground is bark, sprouting branches and leaves indiscriminately.
14. An earthen tunnel, moist and warm, with roots above forming protective hands.
15. A seed tumbles down an endless hill, over sharp and rough stones.
16. An immense tree travels the dreamland, roots dragging the trunk swiftly along.
17. Snow is piled up on each leaf, burying the roots as ice coats the trunk and branches.
18. Fruit swell and fall from the branches, to be carried off by small half-recognizable rodents that gently plant them far away.
19. Many fruit drift above only empty air, many of them large enough to stand on.
20. A grove of ancient trees hum a low, haunting song that echoes across fields of swaying grass.

Worm Tree by Jason Borne